Mirto di Sardegna: The Sardinian Myrtle Berry Liqueur
Most of us know myrtle as a potted shrub you snip a sprig from for a wedding bouquet and then forget about. In Sardinia it grows wild in the scrubland all over the island, its dark berries are picked in winter, and the result is drunk from small glasses straight out of the freezer.
Mirto di Sardegna (in Sardinian: licòre de murta) is a liqueur made from the berries of the common myrtle, which are steeped in alcohol for several weeks and sweetened with sugar or honey syrup; it comes in at around 30% ABV, and in Italian cuisine it is the Sardinian digestif that closes a dinner.
Where Else Myrtle Liqueur Is Made and Who Owns the Name
The word mirto came into Italian from the Latin myrtus, which in turn came from the Greek myrtos; Sardinians, though, call the plant sa murta, and on the Italian mainland the same thing goes by mortella - and bottled mortella is indistinguishable from Sardinian mirto. Myrtle berry liqueur is something the whole Mediterranean shares - it is made in Sardinia, in Corsica and in a few corners of mainland Italy - but the name Mirto di Sardegna is a protected geographical indication of the EU, and only a liqueur whose berries were grown, steeped and bottled on the island may carry it. Corsicans sell liqueur de myrte under their own brands, and French cuisine counts it among its island specialties; Italian sources, however, credit the recipe to 18th-century outlaws from Gallura, who called the liqueur acqua degli angeli, angels' water, and shipped it across the strait to Corsica.
How Long Mirto Has Been Drunk and What Isn't True About It
Travel websites love to claim that mirto is the oldest liqueur in the world and that the Phoenicians were already sipping it. None of that is documented - only the plant is ancient: Venus, so the story goes, wrapped herself in myrtle branches after being born from the sea foam, which is why myrtle has belonged to weddings from ancient Rome right up to a wedding ceremony in the Czech Republic today. The sources only mention the liqueur itself from the 18th century on, and only as a homemade one: in Gallura, in the northeast of the island, it was steeped in people's homes and nobody bottled it. Mirto, then, is an old custom and a young product: it was made at home for two hundred years, but it only reached shops outside Sardinia in 1992, when Zedda Piras of Cagliari, the oldest Sardinian liqueur maker, founded in 1854 as a winery, launched nationwide sales. The island simply kept its liqueur to itself for a long time.
Berries, Spirit and Syrup: What Mirto Is Made Of and How to Drink It
Even in the factory, the method is still the homemade one. The berries are picked from November to February, when they are at their darkest, steeped in spirit for roughly forty days, then pressed, sweetened with syrup and left to rest - exactly the way people back home in the Czech Republic make homemade walnut or sour cherry liqueur. The law requires at least 150 grams of berries per liter; the label on a small bottle from Silvio Carta of Zeddiani near Oristano promises 350 grams, more than double. Fresh liqueur is almost black; after a year of aging it lightens to ruby. Alongside the usual mirto rosso from dark berries there is also mirto bianco from leaves or pale berries - golden, sweeter and rarer.
It is drunk after the meal. Chilled, from glasses that went into the freezer together with the bottle, and without ice, because a cube only waters it down. In a Sardinian restaurant it often arrives unordered, offerto dalla casa: the glass you didn't order after dinner is on the house. If you want to take some mirto home, buy it on the spot - outside Sardinia it is hard to find.
I bought my mirto in a shop on Sardinia, from the shelf of Silvio Carta products, and I reached for the smallest bottle they had: 100 ml. Through the glass it looked dark; in the glass it was brick red to brown. I was expecting something like Becherovka, the Czech herbal liqueur, with its herbal kick and bitter finish. Mirto, though, is much gentler, less sweet and less bitter, pleasant, with something faintly sage-like at the end. The 100 ml cost 6 EUR; a 700 ml bottle on the same shelf was 16 EUR.
